Czechoslovakia

Czechoslovakia was a country which existed in Central Europe from 1918 to 1939 and from 1945 to 1992. The country was founded out of lands ceded to the Bohemian people by Austria-Hungary after World War I, and the nation was dominated by two cultural groups, the Czechs and Slovaks.

The new nation's capital was Prague, and Czechoslovakia would exist as a whole country until 1938. That year, Adolf Hitler of Nazi Germany forced the country to cede the ethnically-German Sudetenland region to his nation, with the United Kingdom and France agreeing on behalf on an unwitting Czechoslovakia. Czechoslovakia felt betrayed, as the country's most important defensive fortifications and banks were located in the region. In March 1939, Wehrmacht forces moved into Czechoslovakia after Hitler virtually held Prime Minister Emil Hacha hostage in Berlin, forcing him to allow the annexation of Czechoslovakia unless he wished for the German Luftwaffe to bomb Prague.

The German administration granted independence to the Slovaks as the "Slovak Republic" in eastern Czechoslovakia, while the western half became the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Czechoslovakia was the first non-German conquest of the Nazi Party, and the Germans sought to Germanize the Slavs who made up the majority of the population, teaching them German and legally changing town names to Germanized names. Czechoslovakia would operate as a government-in-exile in league with the Allied Powers during World War II, declaring war on Germany in 1942. Czechoslovak partisans took part in a resistance war against the Nazis, assassinating Protector Reinhard Heydrich, a move which led to the Lidice massacre. The country would remain under Nazi rule until after the official German surrender of 8 May 1945, with Prague falling to the Allies on 11 May 1945.

After the end of the Second World War, the Soviet Union installed a communist government in power, and Czechoslovakia lost some lands to the Soviet Ukrainian SSR after the war's end, including Mukacheve (known as Mukacevo in Czech) and Uzhhorod (Uzhorod in Czech). Czechoslovakia gained some lands from Hungary, however, including Balassagyarmat (Balasske Darmoty) and Sarospatak (Sarissky Potok), although these lands would later be returned. Czechoslovakia's premier Alexander Dubcek moved to liberalize the country to become a social democratic nation in 1968 with the "Prague Spring" reforms, but the Warsaw Pact crushed the reforms and restored Czechoslovakia to a Soviet puppet state. In 1989, the Velvet Revolution led to the peaceful end of communist rule over Czechoslovakia. In 1992, the "Velvet Divocre" occurred when the Czechs and Slovaks decided to form their own countries, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.